Worse Than a Crime; It’s a Blunder, prospect.org

Anm: Anatol Lieven is senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

[…] Meyerson: If they attempt to depose the Zelensky government and put their own people in, wouldn’t they have to then continue a military occupation in Ukraine? I don’t know how such a government could be sustained absent Russian troops.

Lieven:They would have to keep a massive military presence permanently. And they will also have to be prepared to use that military to repress what I think would be very serious popular protests by the population of Kyiv and central Ukraine. Before 2014, after all (after 2014, things have got more mixed), this area was solidly Ukrainian nationalist.

And this has deeply sinister implications both for Russia and for Ukraine. Repression in Ukraine would be required, but this would replicate both the Russian and the American experience in Afghanistan. It would replicate the American experience in South Vietnam, it would replicate the Soviet experience in Eastern Europe. You would have a client government that could only survive in the massive presence of your troops.

And Russia would be nailed to this indefinitely, because at that point any compromise would become almost impossible. It would require Russia to abandon its allies in Kyiv. I can’t see the West ever agreeing to recognize a Russian puppet government in Kyiv. Läs intervjun